


A Ghost in the Garden

by Jaded



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Do you like quiet character studies, Domesticity in the apocalypse, F/M, Jyn and Cassian's adventures in Scarif, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Slow Burn, THEY LIVE!, if you do this is the fic for you, just not all of them (sorry), survivalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8917240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded/pseuds/Jaded
Summary: Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor survive the Death Star blast on Scarif, but there is no last-minute ship to their rescue. Instead, they have to somehow survive Scarif itself.





	1. Prologue

“I’m a ghost in the garden, scaring the crows / If it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone.” –Gregory Allen Isakov, “Second Chances”

  
“The saddest word in the whole wide world is the word ‘almost.’ He was almost in love. She was almost good for him. He almost stopped her. She almost waited. He almost lived. They almost made it."  — “Tiny Stories” by Nikita Gill

 

 

* * *

 

It would be a matter of seconds before the wave hit them, a shock of earth and rock and death and destruction, and it would take both her and Cassian with it. It was beautiful in its eeriness. The golden land awash in the emerald light of the death star’s blast, the blue ripple of the sea before them, shivering as though in anticipation of the end. Jyn knew that there would be no last-second escape. She reached for Cassian’s hand.

  
“Your father would be proud of you,” he said, the softness in his voice both a punch and a caress. They reached for one another, because Jyn had no words for this moment, and their bodies pressed together, Cassian’s hand stroking her neck, his breathing steadying to match her own, his warmth the comfort she hadn’t sought but had badly needed for so long.

  
The sky rumbled overhead and she tightened her grip on Cassian. She thought of her mother, her father, of Saw; of transmissions into space, about hope, about almost and the family she had found in Cassian and Chirrut and Baze and Bodhi, and even Kaytoo. The sky grew even brighter as the world closed in on them, and she watched it unblinkingly as she felt Cassian’s body relax against hers, ready for the blast to take them. She thought to watch death come for her head on; she would no longer look down. But she accepted that death was to come, and it seemed a pity to waste her last moment in defiance. She had spent enough of her life that way. So she keyed in to Cassian instead, to his steadying heartbeat, to the wetness of his tears against her own cheek. How could they be so alive now and yet be deprived the chance to live another day?

  
She tightened her arms around him, giving one last sigh. There would be no reprieve, yet she felt a calm wash over her. The light would take then any minute. She stared at it as it rolled toward them, and a moment before she felt the shockwave hit, she turned her eyes to Cassian, who saw her gaze before they were blinded, this final thought echoing in her mind as she thought of the sleep to come: _I’m home_.

 

* * *

 

  
And then somehow, she woke. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm all bloody knuckles, longing for home  
If it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone"

\--"Second Chances," Gregory Alan Isakov

* * *

 

 

For a brief moment, Jyn was back in the cave on Lah’mu, trapped and alone, sealed in by the metal hatch, and her chest tightened and her throat closed as though all the air inside had been spent. But beneath her eyelids, she could see the glow of the sun marking her vision red, she could see the blood vessels in the skin, and she knew that she was alive. The memories begin to fall into place. Scarif. The Death Star. The plans. The Citadel. Cassian Andor.

 

She rolled onto her back and opened her eyes, suppressing as best she could the pain that radiated from her core out into every cell in her body. Scarif’s sky was still blue and tropical, and even amongst the devastation, it should have looked beautiful, but all beauty was paled by the silence: there were no singing birds, no jumping fish, no breathing creatures left on land, as far as she could see, save for her.

 

Jyn has never believed in the afterlife, and if she were so inclined, she’d probably only believe in hell. And maybe that’s what this was. Hell. But she was alive.

 

Pulling herself up, she blinked the dust from her eyes and surveyed the landscape before her. Scarif had been irrevocably terraformed by the Death Star’s blast. What had been atolls and ocean and a black, rising citadel was now an endless desert. What had been a tropical island with blue waters and white sand had turned into mountains of rubble and stone and burning ash. Plumes of black smoke rose in the distance, and it was a wonder that there was even anything left to burn.

 

But if there was anything left, she had to find it. Jyn rose to her feet, staggering and disoriented as she recovered her balance. If there was one thing she understood deep in her bones, it was how to survive. And it was time to get to business.

 

So it was first thing first. She needed water.

 

* * *

  
 

Her limp slowed her down, but not enough to stop her. If anything, the pain kept her hysteria from rising up and overwhelming her. She could tolerate pain. She was used to it. Between battles with Saw and his rebellion on Carida and Denon to the brutality on the prison camp on Wobani, she’d been through worse, had suffered injuries deeper and more debilitating. But one thing she could not control was her thirst, and when it came, in this heat, too, it would cripple her.

 

Jyn tried to make sense of where she’d woken, to orient herself somehow. She and Cassian had made it as far as the beach away from the Citadel, which was far enough from the center of the blast, but not far enough away to escape the fallout, or so she had thought. But here she was. But where was here?

 

_And where was he?_

 

The errant thought blew quickly through her mind, so quickly that she was startled by the anguish that ached in her chest. It grew round and hard and settled in her heart like an artifact of a lost civilization. Solid but mysterious and full of untold stories.

 

Faintly, one detail in the distance stood out. But she tried not to think about and make sense of the spot, 200 meters south, that looked like a microcosm of the larger blast, a hole big enough to have once held two bodies intertwined and waiting for the end to come. Whatever it meant, she wasn’t ready to know just yet.

 

The kyber crystal on her necklace glowed warm against her breast. She clutched at it, steeled herself, and continued walking.

  

* * *

 

 

When the sun reached its zenith, Jyn sought shelter in the shadow of a rock formation. Exhausted, she collapsed against a boulder and rested her head on a natural ledge and drifted into a restless sleep.

 

She dreamed of her mother--of Lyra, still so young, forever locked at the age when she died--but perhaps it was less a dream than the same memory played over and over again. Her mother, all dark whipping hair and pale skin, bold and wild and desperate, blaster pointed at Krennic, shouting, “You’re not taking him!”

 

_Do it_.

 

What if her mother had survived? If she had run with her daughter instead of going back for her husband? For years, Jyn had been wracked by _what ifs_ , of alternate lives she could have lived if her mother had gone forward instead of back, if her mother had picked her instead of Galen. But those _what ifs_ stopped when Saw had finally abandoned her at sixteen. She’d given up on those daydreams, because what was _what if_ to what _was_? 

 

Jerking awake, Jyn woke to the fading image of a veil of smoke, of her mother collapsing in a green field, silenced by the sting of a blaster.  

 

Cradling her own head, trying to dull the ache she felt, Jyn struggled back to her feet. Her mouth felt dry as cotton cloth and expired ration bars. _Water_. She needed water. It was time to move again or she’d die where she lay.

 

How long had she slept? Just a night? Whole days? Who was to say? The sun had set and rose, and she was greeted by the pale pinks of dawn streaking across heavy clouds that sank low in the horizon.

 

She wondered at the dream as she followed the curve of the rock steppe, bobbing around boulders, legs as wobbly as a new foal’s.  She had dreamed of her mother often over the years, but it felt different this time, less a memory than a warning.

 

In her heart, Jyn knew that she was Lyra’s daughter, through and through. She knew that, had known that for years. Where Galen was analytical, calculating, and exact, like her mother, Jyn was hot blood and passion, she was impulse and vengeance. It was these very things that had made her mother shine like the brightest of stars, but it had been the same traits that had put the fire out.

 

Then a memory again: Her own blaster aimed at Krennic. Like mother, like daughter. Then, Cassian, out from the shadows, Cassian, holding her back when she was ready for the final shot to avenge her mother, and she had let him cool her temper, and together, they had walked away. _What if_ , she let herself think, then let the thought lie without finishing it.

 

_The strongest stars have hearts of Kyber,_ Chirrut had said. _But what of it?_ Jyn clutched at her necklace again. Her mother’s heart had been strong, too, but maybe there was more to it than that.

 

* * *

 

 

Then, a miracle in the sky. Birds circling and diving. _Water._

 

Jyn cried out, her voice echoing the cry of the birds, and she rushed up the hill, dragging her injured leg and pushing through the stab of pain that came with each step and shot up her nerves and made her head ache. There was no guarantee that there’d be water, but she would take a chance. And the next. If it was not water, it could be food, even if it was rotting flesh. She’d killed birds out of a sky with rocks before. She’d eat its flesh and drink its blood if it meant she’d live another day.

 

Then there, a stream. Water. The miracle.

 

It was thin and weak; just bubbles coming out of the ground and sliding west, a sliver of water, but it was a pulse, and a pulse meant life. Falling to her knees, Jyn dunked her face into the deepest part of the stream and gulped, finally pulling her head out in time to take a breath.  The water and dirt dripped from her skin, and she could feel the grit settle in between her teeth. But she felt awake and alive in a way that had alluded her since she had first opened her eyes again, and it felt good. Shaking, she rose to her feet. And her hands--they had been twitching--she hadn’t realized that until now, and she placed one over the other to stop it. _Breathe, Jyn, breathe_ , she reminded herself.

 

Allowed this moment where her animal brain was quieted, she finally was able to settle into her thoughts. Raising her hand to shield her eyes, she looked again for the birds and was surprised to find that they weren’t any near the water nor any above her in the sky.

 

Scanning east, she finally saw one of the creatures. Large and winged, it resembled birds she’d seen on other planets--carrion birds, she realized, and her stomach twisted sick. One circled, its large, purple-black wings gliding past the sun and blocking out the orange ball in the sky. Its red crest ruffled with another piercing cry. Its partner joined it, and the first bird swooped down low to the ground, then back up. Jyn blinked, and mustered up the courage to look because she feared what she'd find. And there it was, as she thought. A body. Still whole, not yet turned to stardust.

 

Her spine tingled at the base of her neck, and she began to shake again. She compelled herself to go forward. Jyn felt a sudden awareness of an ache deep within her chest. She reached into her tunic and brushed her skin to check if the pain was real or psychic. When she pulled her hand out, her fingertips were faint with cracked and dried blood. It wasn’t a full laceration but a contusion. If there was internal bleeding, she could do nothing about it except to keep moving. Against her breastbone was a violet and yellow bruise in the shape of the kyber crystal, broken blood vessels spreading out like beams radiating from the center of a bursting star.

 

Why was this so hard this time? She had seen many dead bodies before in her life. She’d been responsible for a fair share of them, at that. But it felt so very different now. In another life, it would have been easy to ignore this body, _this person_ , but she couldn’t anymore do that anymore. She was no longer that Jyn Erso. That Jyn had died on the beach.

 

If he was a friend, she would bury him. If it was a foe, she’d turn scavenger and take what she could. Weapons. Clothes. Anything. But her hands shook again, and she pressed them to her chest to stop the shaking. But a curious thing: the birds. She watched the carrion birds circle again over the body, but never landing and settling down to feast on the dead. And she wondered--were they waiting?

 

Scrambling faster toward the body, she felt her heart thrumming as though it wanted to escape her altogether. Faster and faster she went, and the colors began to come into focus. Gray pants. Black boots. Jyn reached the body and fell to her knees, and her hand came to rest on cream colored linen, then onto the dark brown, almost-black hair. And that face. That face she had unknowingly come to know so well in so short a time.

 

“Cassian,” she breathed. Her eyes burned, but her gaze on his face stayed steady and clear.

 

Trembling hands reached to his neck in search of a pulse. She cataloged the burn marks on his face and the blood that had dried into a brown bloom on his shirt where he’d taken Krennic’s blast back in the Citadel. Then she found it, a faint but steady beat. Relief washed over her, and she felt worry slide from her body like water against stone, but it only lasted a moment. Alive did not ensure that he'd wake. Perhaps she'd only gotten him in time to bury him.

 

The kyber stone burned warm against her skin. Jyn balled her hands into fists and punched the ground around her until her knuckles were red.

 

The morning clouds above her had darkened further, and the sky was black as her mood. She recognized what was about them now: pyrocumulus clouds, rain clouds formed from the ashes of the dead, from the fire that still burned beyond the newly formed hills of Scarif. She watched a bolt of dry lightning streak across the sky, going nowhere, and she sank further into the ground and against Cassian.

 

But despair was so easy, she told herself. Hope was always harder, and what she needed was hope. Jyn cupped Cassian's face with a hand, memorizing the hard lines that remained even in sleep.

 

_I've been in this fight since I was six_ _years old_.

 

Impulsively, she pulled off her necklace and fitted in into the palm of his right hand, felt its warmth once again as she released her hold on it. "I'll be back," she said hoarsely. "I need to find shelter for you--for us. Just . . . stay with me, okay?  Stay."

 

Drawing up, she turned her heel and began to walk away, but then she heard his voice, raspy and faint.

 

“Jyn?”

 

“Yes.” She dropped back to her knees. Cassian turned his head, his eyes half-lidded.

 

“You found me.” 

 

_And you came back for me_ , she thought, a low fire beginning to burn in her belly. _Over and over again._ But she couldn't tell him that. Instead, she said, “Let’s just say, it was my turn.”

 

Then the sky opened up, and it began to rain.

 

“Drink,” she said to him.

 

Cassian gazed up at her, silent, but his eyes were gentle and kinder than she had ever seen them, and that said enough. When the first drops reached them, he opened his mouth to drink, his chapped lips parting with soft smack.  Then he sighed.

 

"I need to find us cover," she started.

 

"Stay," he said. "Please."

 

Jyn thought of the rain on Eadu, on Lah'mu. On dozens of other planets and moons, of the ache and chill it left her with. But she would not leave him, not after he had asked.

 

“I can keep you warm,” she said finally, pulling her arms around his torso, her hand resting over his matching scar where her kyber pendant rested. “I’ll be right here. Just sleep. Rest.”

 

Cassian lifted his left hand, dirty, bloody, and gnarled with callouses from twenty years of fighting and covered hers. He squeezed her hand gently and closed his eyes. His breathing settled into a steady rhythm, and he was asleep again. She soon joined him, her head bobbing low toward his, her hair loosing and falling around her eyes.

 

While Jyn slept, she dreamed again of Lyra, dreamed about how much her mother must have loved her father to go back to him, to not want to live without him by her side. And this time it wasn't a warning, but maybe understanding of it at last, if not forgiveness itself.

 

She and Cassian were alone on Scarif for all the knew, but they were alone together, and that counted for something. Water flowed over them both, warm and cleansing, and they slept, curled together on a lonely world.

 

Life had never been kind to Jyn Erso, but maybe that was about to change.


	3. Chapter 3

She had just finished sharpening a rock into a fine point when Cassian finally woke late in the morning. Jyn had been awake since before sunrise but had not stirred until dawn when she was confident that the sun would do enough to keep him warm when she could not.

 

It was Lyra who had taught her how to fashion crude weapons from stone, but Jyn had become expert at it back on Wobani. A blade she had made from purple stone pocketed during a back-breaking shift in the quarry had given her at least five more days of life in the prison camp--five more days, which had led her to the day of her rescue, to her involvement with the Rebels, to meeting Cassian and then almost dying with him. It had given her the briefest moment with her father before he died--enough time to say hello and goodbye, to hate him, to love him, to forgive him, to realize there was nothing left that needed forgiveness. Had any of those moments been a blessing? Had all of them been a curse?

 

“Did you fall asleep on my chest?” he asked, his voice dry like ash, his eyes still closed. His lips were quirked into a wry little smile, and Jyn thought about how she had, about waking to the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of closeness that was still a foreign thing to her, fine and mysterious. It was calming, the knowledge that he was still alive and that the rhythm of his breath was not simply a fragment of a dream that disappeared upon waking.

 

Cassian lifted his hand to his chest, pausing when he realized that he still clutched her Kyber necklace in his hand. He opened his palm and stared at it, his dark eyes thoughtful. Then he turned his gaze to her, his face open, the mask of the spy he had worn when she had first met him long gone.

 

Jyn gave the rock a definitive whack before putting it down, shaking the dust off her palms. She pressed the point to her skin to feel its sharpness. He was still waiting for her reply, and Jyn shrugged but returned his smile. For a moment, life felt natural and easy, as though the weight of the world could be lifted from her shoulders. “Maybe I did,” she said.

 

His fingers wrapped once again around the Kyber stone, and he blinked open his eyes and rolled onto his side with a groan.

 

Jyn jumped to her feet, pain shooting through her leg. She cursed at him, then commanded, “Don’t hurt yourself!” She walked over to him. “You’re alive, but your injuries.” She shook her head and muttered, “What I wouldn’t do for some Bacta.”

 

“What is it that you are making?” he asked as she knelt down next to him, shifting the shirt on his torso to examine his wound. "A blade. We'll need food.” She pointed to the sky. “I saw some birds. They'll be stringy; carrion birds are not good eating, but they're meat. They’re food."

 

"You can take one out of the air," he gestured, "with that?"

 

"I'll need a lance to fix it to, but yes. Do you have a better idea?"

 

"I have my blaster still," he said, shifting again, wincing in pain as he reached for his belt and pulled out the weapon that had saved her life atop the Citadel. She reached for it, and he laid it in her hand. Jyn eased him back down, gently pressing her free palm against his chest and resting it there a moment.

 

“You’re a better shot than I am with this,” she said, “but you’re in no condition to go hunting.”

 

“I can move when it’s important,” he said, meeting her eye.

 

Jyn returned his gaze until she could not, and fidgeting with the blaster, she remarked, “There isn’t much of a charge left. Only a few more shots until it’s dead.” She aimed it at the empty sky, her fingering wavering over the trigger, then lowered it back into her lap. “We need to find shelter, too. And,” she said, smoothing the cloth of his shirt where the stains of blood hadn’t hardened the fabric, “I need to check your wounds to make sure there’s no infection.”

 

“And what of your wounds?” he asked, and Jyn thought of her father, her mother, Saw, Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze; even Kaytoo.

 

“Didn’t you know?" she said, feigning defiance. "I’m invincible.”

 

His eyes crinkled around the corners, and Cassian laughed. She didn’t know if she had ever heard the sound before, but she found that she liked it very much.

 

“Does that make me invincible, too?” he asked.

 

She pursed her lips, then, thoughtful, pulled at the hem of his shirt quietly, “I hope so. Now let me take a look at you.”

 

The blaster wound at his side was the most obvious injury, and the yellowing bruise from his twelve-story fall, but it was the puckered skin of old injuries that caught Jyn’s eye. She cataloged them in her memory: the purple scar on his abdomen, jagged as though he’d been stabbed by broken glass and healed without the aid of bacta; the darkened marks where a chemical burn had yet to fade back into his skin; every terrible and noble thing he had done for the cause. She wondered if any of these scars were for things he had done for himself, or if they had all been done for the Rebellion and the Rebellion only.

 

“How is it?” he asked.

 

“Could be worse,” she said. And it could have been, but it wasn’t, and Jyn felt a flicker of relief unfurl in her chest despite the fact that the scabs were thick and wide and made her stomach turn. She was no healer. Her way had always been to mete out pain, not to take it away. But she wanted to take it away for Cassian. “Can you stand?”

 

“I can try.”

 

Jyn curled a hand behind his back and helped him into a sitting position. He groaned with the effort, but managed with her help to get to his feet.

 

“I feel as though I’ve fallen out of the sky,” he said with a labored breath and a little laugh.

 

Jyn looked at him in mock exasperation, and he raised his eyebrows in response before his face settled into something another person who was not her might have mistaken as fondness, before tightening his arm around his shoulder so that she could carry him a distance once again.

 

They fell to the banks of the bubbling brook, and she scooped water into her hands, then into his mouth, his beard rough against her skin. And they didn’t talk about how they had been here before in what felt just a moment ago, bound together in death, or so they had thought, wrapped together and fearless. What did it mean to have this second chance?

 

Lost in thought, she didn’t realize what he was doing until she heard him say her name.

 

“Jyn?”

 

She looked up, her vision clearing, and the late morning light seemed brighter and purer than anything she had ever seen in a life that had been so much murkiness. Cassian had his hands cupped in front of her face, offering her water with shaking hands.

 

“Drink,” he said, and she did.

 

 

* * *

 

Two small waterfowl flew through the sky. Jyn tracked them with her eyes; arm outstretched and blaster in hand; the barrel aimed at their ruby breasts. As confident as she was as a fighter, long-range shooting had never been her bag. She was better at close range, at melee attacks. She was no sniper. That was Cassian’s specialty.

 

“You’ll never hit them that way,” Cassian said, limping to her side. “You aim at their head or their tail. Not at their hearts.”

 

Jyn lowered the blaster and brushed her hair from her eyes. Her brow was covered in beads of sweat that had been gathering as the afternoon sun rose ahead, her hair wet at the edges. The heat was different from when they had first arrived. The tropical humidity had given away to the dry, oppressive heat of a desert. “I’d never claimed to be a crack shot.”

 

“I know,” he said, then, a smile. “You should stick to stealing other people’s blasters.”

 

“A spy and a comedian,” she replied, tossing a look at him over her shoulder. He was still pale and weak, but his eyes were sharp and alert, his expression wry--the way they had been when they had first met. He leaned against a stack of boulders, golden in the light.

 

The red-breasted birds vanished from her sight. She laid the blaster against her hip.

 

“Is it alright to laugh?” she asked, more to herself than to him. “After everything?”

 

If he had an answer for it, he didn’t share it with her. Jyn watched him for a quiet moment, watched the soft breeze that blew by ruffle his dark hair the way it had when they had walked together to the beach. The same wind kicked up the sand and dusdt around her legs and made her shield her eyes.

 

Then, a flap of wings again in the dead silence of Scarif, and they both turned and looked skyward. In the near distance, a larger flock of birds came into their sight. They were brown birds, plainer in their markings, but their bellies were fatter, the beat of their wings slower. There had been birds like this on Lah’mu, and she remembered her mother serving them on the rare occasions they had meat for a meal. Jyn could maybe hit one of these; an easier shot, even with her unsteady aim. They were only five shots left. Each one had to count.

 

Jyn raised the blaster, and her finger almost fired off the precious shot when she felt Cassian’s left arm slip around her waist, his right sliding up her arm and steadying her hands.

 

“Take the last or the highest bird in the flock,” he said, his voice low in his ear as though there was someone else there to eavesdrop on their private conversation. “Don’t rush the shot.” He moved her hand, guided the blaster to track the flock. “You see? Look for the target’s eye . . .” His voice faltered, and he seemed suddenly far away, lost in a memory.

 

“Cassian?” she said, and he came back, his voice even more clear than before.

 

“Calculate the lead. Don’t change targets. Pick on and stick with it. You can do it, Jyn.”

 

Jyn gritted her teeth and narrowed her eye to get a better bead on her bird. She fired, but missed wide. _Don’t rush it,_ she heard his voice say in her mind, and aiming again, Cassian’s steadiness at her elbow, Jyn shot a second time, and this time, the shot was true. Together, they watched a bird at the back of the flock cry out and drop from the sky.

 

They turned to each other, surprised at the joy mirrored on one another’s face. Her mouth went dry, and Jyn felt suddenly tense with the desire to clasp him by the arms, her body tight with the restraint it required not to.

 

“Are you hungry?” she asked instead.

 

He reached out, fingers curling around her wrist, his thumb on her pulse. “I’m starving.”

 

* * *

 

 

They found a cave not far from their water source and took shelter there. It was little more than a shallow overhang of rock, but it would shelter them from the sun and the rain, and that was enough.

 

Jyn plucked off the bird’s charred feathers and took her stone blade and sliced the bird in half. Cleaning out its innards, she flipped it over and cut off a slice of the breast that had been cooked through by the heat of the blaster bolt. She handed Cassian the meat and he took it, gratefully.

 

Jyn cut herself a slice and brought it to her lips. But she stopped and set down the food. “I haven’t properly shared a meal with anyone for six years,” she said by way of explanation. “So thank you.” She wondered if he understood the multitudes of things for which she was grateful for but could not put to words. Maybe one day she'd be able to tell him.

 

Cassian raised his portion and motioned for her to raise hers. They touched them together, a toast to their first meal. She saw him look up more than once, his eyes following her small movements. She wondered what he saw; what he was looking for and hoping to see. He was a man of many silences, she had come to learn, but sometimes when he looked at her, Jyn felt as though he was telling her everything she needed to know. And it unnerved her.

 

Afternoon soon became twilight. Jyn cleaned his wounds and found a stone that could hold some precious water to keep in their cave. When dusk settled in, they rested, sitting on opposite sides of the cave, heads bowed.

 

“How are we going to make it through this?” she said, staring at him as the light of day faded. The elation of their small victories that day faded, and she felt despair begin to set in. 

 

Cassian looked at her, the calm and the storm. He stood up, grimacing but undeterred, and sat down beside her. He reached for her hand and pressed the Kyber necklace into her palm. He was warm and alive, and she felt the stone pulsate with that same life force. Jyn ached with how grateful she was for that fact that he was even here. 

 

“How are we going to make it through this?” he repeated. “Together. That’s how.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at _operaticspacetrash_ and say hi!


End file.
